6 Things Business School Won't Teach You About Entrepreneurship

&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;For MBAs&comma; starting a business can become the scene of the accident&comma; where theory and education collide with facts and reality&period;&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;

&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;Opinions expressed by
Entrepreneur contributors are their own&period;&NewLine;&Tab;

Business school won’t teach you everything you need to know about starting and running a successful business&period; I learned that the hard way&period;

While business school taught me how to negotiate&comma; communicate effectively and understand the foundations of finance&comma; economics and law&comma; it wasn’t until I started a business that I realized there were significant gaps in my knowledge&period;

The relationships and network I built in business school are worth more than the cost of tuition&period; However&comma; I wound up learning a lot more about business by being an entrepreneur for four months than I did sitting in a lecture hall for four years&period;

Here’s what I learned as an entrepreneur that business school didn’t teach me&comma; and that it won't teach you about building a successful business&period;

1&period; A business can be scrappy&period;

Starting a new business will require you to “figure things out as you go&period;” While business school will emphasize the importance of funding&comma; hiring and scaling&comma; starting a business means making the most of the few resources you have&period;

The reality is most successful companies today started out very scrappy&comma; and from zero&period; They didn’t really have a plan&comma; they didn’t lease a space&comma; nor did they stick with their original idea in some cases&period;

Your success will depend a lot on how scrappy you can be and how you can make the most out of the resources and tools available to you right now&period; Even if this means launching with a minimum viable product to test the market before trying to get the funding&comma; staff or resources you think you need&period;

2&period; Plans aren’t the most important thing&period;

It’s counterintuitive&comma; but overplanning can kill your business&comma; especially when you’ll be pivoting and adjusting based on how your customer uses&comma; perceives and buys your product or service&period;

Business schools like to treat every new business idea like a massive venture that can be completely planned for&period; “Want to start a business&quest; Create a business plan&comma; determine your product-market fit&comma; calculate breakeven&comma; etc&period;”

The truth is a lot of this will become more clear as you test and first bring your product or service to market&period; It’s much more important to execute on your idea and get proof of concept&comma; instead of trying to plan every single aspect of your business to perfection&period; Excessive planning before execution is usually just procrastination&period;

3&period; How to set goals&period;

With so much emphasis on planning and strategic decision-making&comma; it’s kind of ironic how little business schools go into setting goals and reverse engineering what you want&period;

So many entrepreneurs know what they want to do&comma; but they don’t really know how to do it&period; Setting goals makes it easier to determine the path since you can reverse-engineer from where you want to be&period;

Goals keep you accountable&comma; as well as align everyone on your team&period; The last thing you want as a business owner is for your team to have different motivations that contradict &lpar;or compete with&rpar; one another&period;

What’s that one goal you want your whole team focused on&quest; Zero in on it to drive a bigger impact&period;

4&period; Marketing in the 21st century&period;

Many schools are finally starting to improve their marketing classes to fit in with the digital age&comma; but you’d be surprised how far behind a lot of the marketing education still is&period; To be fair&comma; it’s because this information changes a lot faster than most business schools can keep up&period;

As an entrepreneur&comma; it’s your responsibility to stay in the loop on the current trends in digital marketing&comma; as well as the tactics that work right now&period;

A lot of the fundamental marketing principles business schools teach are still useful and relevant&period; However&comma; it’s crucial to your success that you have a deep understanding of things like pay per click advertising&comma; search engine optimization&comma; and email marketing&comma; just to name a few&period;

If you want to learn how to create a successful Facebook ad&comma; for example&comma; you’re not going to find the answer in a classroom&period; You’ll have to create one and tweak it as you go&period;

5&period; How to be creative&period;

Entrepreneurs need to channel their creativity often&comma; whether you need to come up with unique solutions to your customer’s problems or find that great business idea&period;

Creativity is very hard to teach&comma; so it’s no wonder this is something lacking in business schools&period; Business schools teach systems and rules&period; They show you the parameters you’ll work within as an entrepreneur and how to make the most of them&period;

Creativity is about working outside those parameters&comma; thinking outside the box&period; As an entrepreneur&comma; sometimes the best solution isn’t the most obvious one&period; Sometimes it requires an inspired solution&period;

When you think about some of the most famous cases of companies succeeding despite the odds&comma; or the most well-received marketing campaigns&comma; there’s usually a lot of creativity behind it&comma; not a cookie-cutter formula taught in a business school&period;

But that inspiration often comes from trying new things&comma; making mistakes and learning from others&period; And that kind of experience gets fast-tracked when you’re an entrepreneur&period;

6&period; Risk-taking&period;

Schools are designed to teach students not to fail&period; They teach students to be more risk-averse than risk-taking&period; They are designed to have students work within a set of rules&period; This is the antithesis of being an entrepreneur and running a business&period;

Running a business means failing&comma; a lot&period; Entrepreneurship is about taking risk&period; It involves thinking outside the box and creating an unconventional path&period;

Failure should be seen as part of the learning process&period; Because students are discouraged from failing&comma; they never see the value of failure as a way of learning&period; Thus&comma; B-school students that go into entrepreneurship may become more risk-averse&period;

The problem with this of course is that entrepreneurs give themselves an excuse to give up too early&comma; and they avoid taking the risks that could help their business take off&period;

Any roadblock or challenge you encounter as a business owner shouldn’t be perceived as a stop sign&period; Instead&comma; it may simply mean you need to push forward in a different direction&period;